Into the Unknown? Longitudinal Evidence on Single Mothers’ Coping with Worries during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Austria

• Vera Dafert ^[1] ; Sabine Erben Harter ^[1] ; Ulrike Zartler ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Vienna

     University of Vienna

     Innere Stadt, Austria

     
• Localización: European Families Facing Hard Times: Challenges, Strategies, and Family Policies / Vida Cesnuitytė (ed. lit.), Gerardo Meil Landwerlin (ed. lit.), Jesús Rogero García (ed. lit.), Irma Budginaitė‐Mačkinė (ed. lit.), 2026, ISBN 9781836088950, págs. 105-121
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The COVID-19 pandemic emphasized and exacerbated the challenges and worries of single mothers. So far, there is little longitudinal data on how these long-term strains affected single mothers and their families. We address this gap by explicating the worries single mothers faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and how they coped over time. Based on family stress theory and on the concept of family resilience, this contribution relies on an Austrian qualitative longitudinal study with a subsample of 15 single mothers. Respondents were surveyed repeatedly (12 waves of data collection) between March 2020 and June 2022 using problem-centered telephone interviews and diary entries. Data analysis was based on the grounded theory coding scheme. Results show that the single mothers had to deal with worries in three areas (self, family, and society) in their everyday lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identified four different modes of coping with these areas of worries: surrendering, cancelling, self-containing, and interacting. Through these various modes, single mothers sought to maintain or establish stability in their family life by addressing their own worries. Over time, protective factors, risk factors, and pre-pandemic resilience explained the single mothers’ modes of coping. Despite experiencing a range of worries during the COVID-19 pandemic, the single mothers showed great resilience and the potential to cope successfully with their worries. We understand this potential as something that the single mothers had already acquired before the pandemic, as they had tended to act flexibly and independently in their everyday lives even during non-crisis periods.